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Cultural Literacy and System 1.

It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything. We pick topical, relevant bits from Facebook, Twitter or emailed news alerts, and then regurgitate them. Instead of watching “Mad Men” or the Super Bowl or the Oscars or a presidential debate, you can simply scroll through someone else’s live-tweeting of it, or read the recaps the next day. Our cultural canon is becoming determined by whatever gets the most clicks.

I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else, probably, but now that I’m working my way through the excellent (so far) Thinking, Fast and Slow, I realize that this is all the waywardness of each of our System 1s gone haywire. (And seriously, the Kindle version of that book is $2.99 right now. Purchase it.)